Empty
by ncfan
Summary: This was the only way she could fight.


I own nothing.

* * *

She though of him as Pharazôn in her head now, and that was enough of a surrender by itself that Míriel didn't want to risk losing any more ground. She still had a way to fight, at least that was what Míriel told herself, when she was able to believe that she ever put up much of a fight at all.

The day was dreary with rain and gray clouds.

That was how it had been for the better part of a month now, so that no one could even enjoy the summer that crept upon them, so that farmers were left to worry over the state of their crops, wondering if the roots would simply lose their grip and the plants they labored over would all wash away in the torrent.

When she was little, Míriel had questioned the point of such torrential rain. It seemed to her to cause nothing but misery, causing children dissatisfaction, farmers worry and mariners alarm. She saw nothing good coming of it. Her father told her that sometimes, ravaging storms were needed in this world. When a land was poisoned, broken, dying, a storm strong enough to wash the poison away could heal the land.

This was the only way she could fight.

Míriel had begun to think of him, her sham-husband, her usurper-husband, as Pharazôn, just as he wanted. What did that mean? Did that mean that she was becoming Zimraphel, becoming a different person? She did not yet fear death, thinking it unnatural, did not yet speak Adûnaic in her heart nor blaspheme against the Valar. How long would that last? Would she become Zimraphel, or remain Míriel?

She had no allies here in Armenelos. Any who still counted themselves Faithful were far away, and Pharazôn surrounded himself with his loyal followers. There were many among the ranks of the King's Men; her sham-husband was popular, Míriel would give him that. There was no one in Armenelos who would stand with the rightful Queen. This was the only way she could fight.

Her blood had come again, red and black, dribbling down her thighs when it escaped the linen clots she used to stem the flow. Míriel knew that other married women would have been grieved to be greeted with their blood month after month, especially women married to those who demanded heirs of their flesh. Other women would have been worried, even frightened, if year after year, they never got with child by their husband. At the very least, it would have concerned them. Míriel looked at the blood that greeted her every month and felt nothing but a numb, distant satisfaction. There was no one in Armenelos who would stand by her in the open, but there were still a few discreet and understanding apothecaries.

There was something Pharazôn wanted from Míriel, something that all men wanted from their wives. She saw it in the way his eyes would flicker to her belly, bitter, thwarted, expectant, waiting; he never broached the subject with her, but the lopsided, displeased set of his mouth (almost like a child, really, but then, he had always been rather childlike in his greed) when every month reported the same thing to him.

But what did the immortal, the deathless, the undying need with heirs anyway? Míriel wondered bitterly. Perhaps that was why Pharazôn had never dallied with any of the women available to him, why he'd never fathered any natural children as Kings had sometimes done in the past. Perhaps that was why he never questioned why his wife never gave him children.

The Queen was frail, many said; just look at her, small and slender as a quill pen. How frail she looked, how thin and pale. Her mother had been the same way. Was it any wonder that she seemed incapable of bearing children? Indeed, Míriel had grown frail; she would admit to that. She held her hands up in the dreary, watery light, and she saw them white, the veins starkly visible, frankly skeletal in appearance. It was a small price to pay.

The foul taste of the brew and the effect it had on her body, it was a small price to pay, until the day came when Míriel's bleeding stopped entirely, and she would no longer have need of it. Take it once a week, they said, no more often than that, and no less often, if she wished for it be effective, and if she did not wish for the brew to poison her unto death. Whenever she took it, she was ill, pale and swaying, but Míriel knew that she would not have a child in such a state.

It was not the way she would have had things, if she had had any other choice. It…

Thunder made its muttering known all across the sky, and Míriel pressed her head against the cool stone wall and sighed.

She imagined it, sometimes, having children to love, children who would carry on her blood and the blood of her father into the future. It was the duty of a ruler to provide the land with an heir. But not a land like this. Not a land like Númenor, where the poison ran so deep in the soil and the roots that not even the strongest of purifying storms could wash the poison away.

Míriel imagined it, sometimes, having children to love, but not by a man like Pharazôn. She would not see it, not see any child of hers raised by that man. Wouldn't see innocence perverted into hate, ignorance and blasphemy. She wouldn't watch her own children grow in darkness and poison and be tainted by it.

The blood of the Kings of Númenor would cease in this line, with her generation. In such a tainted land as this, with such a tainted man as King, the Queen would not allow the blood of the Kings to proliferate any further. She would never see a child of her own flesh rule.

This was the only way she could fight.


End file.
